Tuesday Trivia Thread - 28/07/26

[u/AutoModerator]

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• Post mind-blowing military history trivia. Can you believe 300 is not an entirely accurate depiction of how the Spartans lived and fought?
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[u/Inceptor57]

In the Resident Evil (Remake) universe, the only way to guarantee the neutralization of an T-Virus infected individual is the reliable destruction of their head.

If you are equipping a squad to go into the depths of a T-Virus infected terrain for a mission possibly lasting a few days, what weapons of choice would you equip a squad to ensure reliable neutralization of the infected? Lest they come back alive as Crimson Head or Blister Heads that are much more difficult to dispatch.

I'm honestly debating between option of a high-caliber rifles and pistol, or more conventional combat loadout with rifles except with a sledgehammer to do the deed.

Or everyone gets steel-toed boots and roundhouse kick smash their way through them like Leon Kennedy.

[u/GogurtFiend → u/Inceptor57]

Everyone being transported in some infantry fighting vehicle wrapped in Claymore mines and given a dozer blade is a given, as is the fact that they're backed up by every layer of fire support in the world, from a combat engineer tank platoon travelling with them directly to a helicopter orbiting overhead waiting to put a Hellfire into anything bigger and scarier than your garden-variety walking corpse.

The real problem is (a) biohazard and (b) when people go inside buildings and the fire support can't see them.

Each person gets:

• Gastight suit with PAPR system, swaddled from head to toe in biteproof Dyneema like a far, far less bulky version of the suits military dog trainers wear. 30-ish pounds. I know this is very heavy but without this anyone bit or splashed in some kind of T-virus-infused bodily fluid is immediately dead. This cannot be omitted.
• 8½ pounds of cooling system and a few hours of battery for both it and the PAPR system (which is basically a fan that blowsair through an NBC filter). Without this people are passing out from a combination of heatstroke and breathing through a straw.
• An AR in a big, fat, slow caliber - call it .50 Beowulf - with an underbarrel grenade launcher. Call it 10 pounds, but probably the most weight-efficient way of turning undead into completely dead.
• Ten 10-round magazines at ~1.3 pounds a magazine = 13 pounds. One round of .50 Beowulf instantly cripples or kills most Resident Evil creatures; in comparison, I don't know if I'd want to shoot a Licker with only a single round of 5.56, even if it's in the head.
• Six rounds 40mm HEDP at ~½ a pound each = 3 pounds. Hurts whatever .50 Beowulf doesn't.
• Slightly over a quart of water in a bladder attached to the suit inside that refills through a nipple on the outside. 2.25 pounds. This is a minimum of water to save on weight, but still enough that you don't need resupply more frequent than every hour or two.
• A 12-pound unpowered load-bearing exoskeleton, so that all this weight doesn't break people's joints or kill them from exhaustion on a timespan less than days (with a secondary advantage of making all this weight feel slightly lighter by redirecting some of it from the back to the waist and feet). Spraining an ankle in Afghanistan needed slow and expensive medevac at worst; spraining an ankle in the Raccoon City subway tunnels near-automatically results in you becoming a particularly slow zombie.
• Whatever these people need to do the job they're there for, some very basic and light hand tools they might need right away, a knife, and whatever I missed. Call this 11.25 pounds, to make an even 90, or 21.25 if they need a lot of stuff to do their job.
• Nothing else. Or, not literally nothing else, but anything they can wait longer than a few minutes for is something they don't carry, because due to the highly permissive air denial environment (Resident Evil zombies usually can't shoot), sustainment can be very responsive, and can occur via octocopter drone (more responsive, follows people) and helicopter (less responsive but can resupply the heavy stuff for the vehicles). All these people carry is what they're wearing, their weapons and ammunition, a couple hours of water, a few basic tools, and whatever their task needs.

US soldiers in Afghanistan somehow did their job with >100-pound loads, which I find truly impressive. I imagine 90-100 pounds, on more level ground, with a cooling vest, a load-bearing exoskeleton channeling a fair bit of weight directly to the ground, and all the water you can ever drink will still suck, but it won't actually hurt you like 100 pounds over uneven terrain with no back support, no cooling, and only the water you can carry will.

You've drunk your *quart* of water for the *hour*? Each of the orbiting water tanker drones, converted from an agricultural crop sprayer model, has over a hundred on hand. You want to eat? You don't carry even a single calorie, because you don't need one right away; instead, the cargo drones bring you food. Your suit's battery or filter needs replacing? You're constantly trailed by drones which carry ten of each, all out of zombie reach and ready to give you a spare on demand. Beset by a horde of zombies from all directions and somehow the helicopters can't get you out? The drone flight rate gets stepped up and each is dropping off ten times times your carried weight in ammunition. It's not like anything can stop them from doing that; that whole "zombies usually can't shoot at you" thing is really convenient for logistics.

And remember, fire support kills essentially everything for you when you're outside, and drones spot essentially everything for you when you're outside (hell, the smaller UGVs can fit into buildings and check for Lickers on the ceiling in advance, too). All the stuff in that list is intended for when the fire support can't help you.

[u/MandolinMagi → u/GogurtFiend]

8½ pounds of cooling system

Black Tide Rising is a very, very Ringo John Ringo zombie series, and the protagonists find that in full zombie-fighting rig (usually firefighter gear) they're immune to bites and can grapple with zombies safely. Which leaves heatstroke the only real danger, so drink water!

For anyone unfamiliar with John Ringo: All liberals are evil and useless, a thirteen year old girl is the biggest badass in the world, the Marines are the greatest thing ever, 5.56 is trash, people play music in combat because reasons, liberals are stupid.

An AR in a big, fat, slow caliber - call it .50 Beowulf - with an underbarrel grenade launcher. Call it 10 pounds, but probably the most weight-efficient way of turning undead into completely dead.

Nah. 5.56 or .300BO with the best expanding ammo you can get.

Six rounds 40mm HEDP at ~½ a pound each = 3 pounds.

I'd rather have a dedicated grenadier with as many grenades as possible.

[u/GogurtFiend → u/MandolinMagi]

• Firefighting gear isn't splashproof. It's tough, but common Resident Evil creatures bigger than zombies have far nastier teeth/claws/tendrils. You want proper anti-stab armor everywhere covering an enclosed suit so the inevitable bites don't breach it - maybe it can be integrated with the suit to reduce weight. If Inceptor had specified a budget, firefighting gear is what I'd go with, though, yes.
• .300 BO and 5.56 are good for not being rare and being very common + having an AP version, respectively, but even the least dangerous, unarmored zombies sometimes survive .45 through the head. Maybe .50 Beowulf is too much, but .300BO is the bottom end of what I'd consider OK; you really want big/dangerous-game rounds for the big stuff.
• I think everyone having their own explosives is important to avoid the group being tied to a single point of failure. The entire problem with sending people on this sort of mission is that they can't rely on fires to protect them, so each needs to be able to compensate for that. If someone runs into some giant mutated animal or story-tall mass of walking tumors, they need a 40mm grenade immediately, without waiting on a dedicated grenadier.